Monday, April 22, 2013

Salmon Confidential

Healthy salmon heart on left. One infected with piscine reovirus on right.Frame-grab from Salmon Confidential

I've just finished watching the excellent new documentary Salmon Confidential (watch for free at the link) and I have to say, while enraging, I'm not surprised. This is the story of our federal government refusing to hear that there might be a problem with fish farms. It's a story of political gagging, attacks on whistle-blowers, and, ultimately, a complete failure to safeguard our food system. And what the hell else is new.
I cannot write a precis that would do the film justice, so I'm only going to encourage you to spend an hour watching the story unfold. And, if you are a BC resident as I am, make sure to raise the issue now, during the run-up to the election, and then vote for whatever candidate acknowledges that something has to be done about this.
At it's core, this film is about more than salmon; it's about enclosing the commons on the ocean, and, where it cannot be enclosed, destroying the resource and replacing it with one that can be enclosed. It is, in part, the culmination of a 250 year old war on the First Nations: destroy the food source and you destroy those dependent on it.

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Hitch-hiked across Canada in the mid-seventies, changing, in the process, from an Albertan into a Canadian. Entered post-secondary studies at Grant McEwan College in Edmonton, moving over to the U of Alberta a year later to read English Lit. Friends invited me out for a visit to Victoria, and a week later I had a job, place to live, and was enrolled at UVic. Married two years later, we had twins (a boy, a girl, and a vasectomy), moved back to Alberta where we ran an over-educated New Agriculture farm for fourteen years. After the kids moved out, moved back to Victoria where we discovered sea kayaking. Live quietly, trying to pursue a life of voluntary simplicity, although we occasionally fail to live up to our own ideals. Still married, 28 years later, to the same person--and quite happy about it. Currently working on a book about Canadian food security issues.